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Ghost Hunters
William James And The Search For Scientific Proof Of Life After Death
by Deborah Blum


7.0

based on 16 reviews
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based on 6 votes
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Official Publisher Site

"Ghost Hunters" chronicles the turn of the 20th century search for empirical proof of the paranormal by a group of distinguished scientists, including Harvard professor William James.

Penguin Press, 384 pages
08/03/2006
$25.95

ISBN: 1594200904

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
History
Science & Nature

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Tina Jordan

Compulsively readable After reading Blum's mesmerizing account, you might be tempted to dust off that Ouija board.

Publishers Weekly

She achieves deep poignancy at moments that in less gifted hands could have seemed most laughable. [19 June 2006, p.57]

The Independent Gary Lachman

A fascinating, moving and, most importantly, paradigm-challenging account of the lives and work of the many scientists and thinkers who championed the cause of psychical research.

Daily Telegraph William Leith

This is history as you want it to be written. As you finish, you search your shelves for other books by the protagonists, other books on the period. When I picked this one up, I would have told you I didn't believe in ghosts. And now I'm not so sure.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger K. Miller

Blum's book, skillfully organized and felicitously written, lays out the facts like a good, extended piece of newspaper writing and lets the reader decide. Yet she cannot suppress a sense of wonderment that makes her say that writing the book "changed the way I thought. . . . I'm just less smug than I was when I started, less positive of my rightness."

The Guardian Jad Adams

Blum presents a fascinating story in a very readable but accurate style, though she must have been told that audiences don't like dates in their narratives; I had to keep checking the rather sparse references section to know where I was.

Library Journal Michael D. Cramer

She keeps the story moving and fleshes out each character. [1 July 2006, p.103]

Boston Globe Michael Kenney

A compelling account of this eerie subject.

Salon Laura Miller

One of the peculiarities of this gracefully written and always fascinating book is Blum's noncommittal stance toward the ideas driving most of the society's research.

San Francisco Chronicle Paul Collins

Blum offers no explanation for why Spiritualism exploded when it did.

The New York Times Patricia Cohen

Ghost Hunters is less interested in the sociology of bamboozlement than in giving a respectful accounting of what the participants saw and felt. This approach has benefits, but among its drawbacks are the sometimes credulous reports of telepathy, telekinesis or contacts with the dead.

The New York Times Book Review Anthony Gottlieb

Blum tells her literally wondrous tale very well. But apart from the vague suggestion that it answered a need created by the encroachment of science on religious belief, she offers very little reflection on the question of why spiritualism suddenly became so popular. And perhaps she tells her tale too even-handedly, since readers may be left with the impression that the Society for Psychical Research was on to something.

Washington Post Dennis Drabelle

But Blum's way with her fascinating material is a bit bloodless. By the end, the reader wants to ask the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (for her 1992 reporting on primate research), "So what do you think about all these weird goings-on?"

Kirkus Reviews

Blum seems content to relate rather than to analyze; her text lacks analysis. She ends with the patent observation that the conflict between science and the supernatural endures. [15 May 2006, p.503]

Booklist Gilbert Taylor

Determined to be fair, Blum never scoffs as she narrates the tantalizingly inconclusive results of forgotten research in the history of psychology. [1 Aug 2006, p.12]

Daily Telegraph Duncan Fallowell

Blum just tells the stories and makes no attempt to evaluate them in the light of present knowledge.

The average user rating for this book is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

J Young gave it a4:
Blum presents a nice historical sweep of spiritualism and the SPR, and she's a pretty good storyteller in some ways. However, perhaps in her ardor to tell a good story, she falls victim to some fundamental flaws. First, she fails to keep control of the various threads of the story, such that the narratives branch and leapfrog enough to exasperate the reader (well, at least this reader). Second, while Blum may have been trying to be objective, she merely succeeds in presenting the various accounts of mediumship and other spiritualist performances (and make no mistake--they were and are performances in every sense of the word) with very little interrogation of those accounts or the negative evidence gathered about them. And such evidence abounds. Spiritualism is an enormously interesting topic, but we have enough of magical thinking in our time without promoting it even further with uncritical accounts as are found in this book. Read Janet Oppenheim's _The Other World_ or Alex Owen's _The Darkened Room_ for more accurate accounting of spiritualist activities.

Idiotgirl In Seattle gave it an8:
Not quite finished. But this book does a good job of balancing scholarship and accessibility. I have an academic background. Found out today at my office that a friend had read a review and was interested. This is a very good book.

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Ghost Hunters William James And The Search For Scientific Proof Of Life After Death by Deborah Blum

Ghost Hunters
William James And The Search For Scientific Proof Of Life After Death
by Deborah Blum